Un-complicating DeFi: An interview with ETHALend co-founder Danny Boahen

While the DeFi space has been growing tremendously with new projects and platforms coming up, it is yet to gain mass adoption. One of the major reasons for this is the complexity of projects and platforms in the space. It makes it harder for novice or beginners to venture into the DeFi space.

The ETHA Lend project aims to simplify DeFi for the average user and help facilitate its mainstream adoption.

In conversation with Danny Boahen, Head of Operations and Co-Founder at ETHA Lend we discuss their agnostic platform, ETHA wallet, eVaults, and much more.

1 . Tell us more about ETHA Lend as an agnostic yield optimizer? What was the vision behind creating it?

I would like to first elaborate on what a yield optimizer is because it is often used interchangeably with yield aggregators and hence the confusion. 

Yield optimization can be defined as leveraging data points and optimization techniques to optimize the performance and returns on assets invested. In our protocol, we enhance yield optimization, by leveraging state-of-the-art automatization.

Additionally, our protocol algorithmically provides optimal yield and offers an effortless yet intuitive user experience. Another feature that lends us authenticity is our discovery algorithm that is capable of asset allocation in seconds – no matter how ample the asset supply is. 

In terms of our vision, innovation is at the heart of the protocol. We strive to maintain a healthy balance between assets and returns, self-optimizing yields in the most sustainable way possible. We value inclusiveness, and we are passionate about driving away the sentiment of “DeFi is hard to understand and execute.” So far, our community is proof that we have done an excellent job on that in terms of UI or just general operations. For example, our ETHA smart wallet makes using the eVault and Lending market butter smooth. Anybody can hop on to the protocol and start making returns. Finally, we are very particular about cost and operational efficiency, and we have delivered on that promise. 

Simple, straightforward, rewarding, and elegant! That pretty much sums up the protocol. And that’s our secret recipe for evolving into the ultimate product-market fit for the entire DeFi landscape.  

2. What was the reason behind choosing the Polygon network as the first initiative for ETHA Lend?

So, here’s a little history behind ETHA Lend; that is quite underrated, I guess! I am taking you back to the time before the Mainnet launch; we began with Ethereum as our chosen network to deploy.

But it became clear to us that launching on Ethereum might not align well with what we wanted to achieve for our users. Polygon was a very strategic answer to our concerns around factors that we wanted to address – congestion, scalability, efficiency, gas cost; these are all the high barriers to entry costs that we wanted to avoid – well at all costs for prosperity; of our community!

With scalability, near-zero gas fees, and the rapidly expanding ecosystem of Polygon, it was a perfect choice. Once we were sure, the team was working tirelessly behind the scenes and redeployed the protocol on a new network in a matter of weeks.

Coming back to the present, we have seen the results, and our community is delighted with this choice, so all of that was certainly worth it. Now we have taken a step further with Polygon and launched our MATIC stable asset eVault, so that’s a cherry on top!

3. Could you elaborate on the ETHA Wallet? How is it going to be helpful for users?

The ETHA Wallet is a non-custodial wallet. Essentially it’s a smart contract wallet, owned by the user’s web3 wallet.

The most used feature of our wallet by our users is transaction batching. So take, for example, as a user, and you want to invest in our wETH vault. Curve is the underlying AMM for the wETH vault, so you need LP tokens.

If you were to invest in the strategy manually, you’d have to first swap your MATIC to DAI or any other stablecoin supported within this strategy, approve spending your DAI, add DAI liquidity to Curve pool, receive LP tokens, and return to our protocol, to stake your LP tokens to the gauge.

What our smart wallet does is, it will batch all the individual steps I listed above until you are ready to claim your rewards. Yes! That’s it. I know it sounds too good to be accurate, but our community is already using this feature, and we are glad to see that it is certainly helping them in their ventures.

Then there is another problem that I’m sure most of us have experienced at one point or another; suppose you want to invest in the ETHA Lending market – DAI yield optimization. But you don’t have enough DAI that you initially wished to invest.

Instead, what you have is a few other assets that you can swap for DAI. So, manually what you do is swap each individual asset on a DEX, pay for each transaction, and then you’ll end up with a satisfying amount of DAI that you wanted. 

But by that time, the point is already lost, you have already spent so much on Gas fees than you ought to and of course your precious time, you might have spent doing a million other things. 

But with the ETHA Wallet, you don’t need all of that hassle. 

You can simply swap up to 9 assets at one single time and in near-zero gas fees. But that’s not the end of it; it has some other handy features – like wallet delegation. This one is still not active on the UI, but it will be very soon, wherein people can delegate their wallets to others for extreme accessibility. 

4. What are eVaults? What is the current reward strategy deployed on Polygon about it?

eVaults provide risk-averse liquidity providers exposure to volatile assets, such as ETH, BTC, and more, by leveraging stablecoin asset strategies. You deposit stablecoins, and earn yield in volatile assets, while your principal is simultaneously earning yield, deriving from strategies of the underlying protocols we leverage.

Currently, we have four eVaults, including ETH, BTC, MATIC, and LINK. And we are expanding very fast, so that number of eVaults will certainly go up very soon. 

5. How does the stable asset strategy on ETHA Lend work? What steps would be taken to ensure that users are protected from market volatility?

Our stable asset strategy is curated mainly towards risk-averse users, minimizing their principal exposure to impermanent losses, while offering the benefit to earn yield in volatile asset classes. 

Using stablecoin strategies minimizes the exposure to impermanent losses, due to the fact that stablecoins prices always trade close to a dollar.

Recently we launched a poll asking our community about which strategy they wish to have next. Depending on the community consensus, you will see a variety of different types of Vaults including, volatile asset strategy with mind-blowing APYs, auto compounding, and multi-strategy Vaults. 

6. What is the $ETHA token? How does it stand out from the other tokens in the space?

ETHA token is a native utility token and future governance token of our protocol and has a total supply of 30,000,000. In the future, ETHA token holders will have the ability to take part in the decision-making part of the protocol as a part of the protocol’s governance system. With our Staking functionality coming, users can stake their ETHA token to earn on the protocol’s revenue in ETHA tokens, and as we launch new staking pools, users can take advantage and earn even more rewards. 

Users can earn even more ETHA by interacting with our eVaults and lending market as protocol rewards. ETHA token is unique because it holds the potential to appreciate by use case. We have also solidified that there are plenty of other use cases and more in the pipeline that will drive the token’s competitiveness in the space. 

7. How will users benefit from holding the $ETHA token in the long term?

So, there are plenty of reasons to hold ETHA, and that starts primarily with the fact that holding and staking ETHA tokens allows anyone to earn on the protocol’s revenue. In the future, ETHA token holders can participate in the governance of the protocol. In addition, ETHA will be used when new mining pools are launched to supplement yields. Even if a portion of ETHA is staked, we imagine that early stakers will get sustainable APYs at the beginning, and that’s just the start of a long list of other product synergies that will be launched wherein the token will play a crucial role for our users. The protocol is less than two months old, the TVL locked, and other derivatives as proof of the fact that there is a lot more to come for ETHA token holders very soon! 

8. What is the ETHA Lending market? Tell us about the services and benefits offered to users through it?

DeFi is based on technological innovations that are called blockchain and smart contracts. Still, it all boils down to some pretty well-known principles of finance – such as lending-borrowing. In DeFi, lending-borrowing is a way for a user to earn passive income. For borrowers, a way to employ their existing assets to obtain liquidity at a fair rate, without middlemen involved!

But with the rapid iteration of such lending-borrowing strategies, the market is no more trailblazing, too much manual work and mathematical operations, high gas fees, approval fees, authentication fees, etc., do drive off the average lenders and borrowers away from actually getting value-based yields on the protocol. 

This is where the ETHA Lending Market becomes a unique product-market fit. There is no walled garden within the protocol; everybody is welcome, and picking fruits is pretty simple here. First is our discovery algorithm that calculates the best asset allocation for earning optimal yields, minimizing exposure to constant fluctuating APYs. The protocol fetches on-chain data from the underlying lending protocols our protocol is built on. That allows us to provide hybrid supply rate models that offer a more consolidated experience to users, depending on the amount a user supplies.

We are also working on borrowing, so that’s one more event for our community to look forward to. 

9. Tell us more about your partnership with Gelato protocol? How will users benefit from this?

Our partnership with Gelato Network allows us to streamline certain processes that used to be handled manually. We kicked this partnership off by automating harvesting for the eVaults. Now we are currently exploring more use cases, in order to automate and optimize even more processes.

10. What are some of the future ETHA Lend partnerships and services we can look forward to?

We have several partnerships planned for improving our existing functionalities and the upcoming ones. For example, we are already in touch with several protocols that are pretty interested in staking pools, eVaults, and dual liquidity mining programs. 

In terms of services, UI is one of the essential factors we are focusing on right now. The staking functionality is coming very soon. Then there will surely be even more eVaults in upcoming weeks; we are also working on several other exciting features that we shall disclose once the development is complete. 

For more information about ETHA Lend, please check out their website.

Disclaimer: This is a paid post and should not be treated as news/advice.